“Nay--on my soul, you do me wrong!” cried Mr. Caryll indignantly. “If aught had been needed to spur me on, it had been my meeting with this lady. It needed that to make me realize to the bitter full the wrong my Lord Ostermore has done me in getting me; to make me realize that I am a man without a name to offer any woman.” But Sir Richard, watching him intently, shook his head and fetched a sigh of sorrow and disdain. “Pshaw, Justin! How we befool ourselves! You think it is not so; you try to think it is not so; but to me it is very plain. A woman has arisen in your life, and this woman, seen but once or twice, unknown a week or so ago, suffices to eclipse the memory of your mother and turns your aim in life--the avenging of her bitter wrongs--to water. Oh, Justin, Justin! I had thought you stronger.” “Your conclusions are all wrong. I swear they are wrong!” Sir Richard considered him sombrely. “Are you sure--quite, quite sure?” Mr. Caryll's eyes fell, as the doubt now entered his mind for the first time that it might be indeed as Sir Richard was suggesting. He was not quite sure. “Prove it to me, Justin,” Everard pleaded. “Prove it by abandoning this weakness where my Lord Ostermore is concerned. Remember only the wrong he has done. You are the incarnation of that wrong, and by your hand must he be destroyed.” He rose, and caught the younger man's hands again in his own, forced Mr. Caryll to confront him. “He shall know when the time comes whose hand it was that pulled him down; he shall know the Nemesis that has lain in wait for him these thirty years to smite him at the end. And he shall taste hell in this world before he goes to it in the next. It is God's own justice, boy! Will you be false to the duty that lies before you? Will you forget your mother and her sufferings because you have looked into the eyes of this girl, who--” “No, no! Say no more!” cried Mr. Caryll, his voice trembling. “You will do it,” said Sir Richard, between question and assertion. “If Heaven lends me strength of purpose. But it asks much,” was the gloomy answer. “I am to see Lord Ostermore to-morrow to obtain his answer to King James' letter.” Sir Richard's eyes gleamed. He released the other's hands, and turned slowly to his chair again. “It is well,” he said slowly. “The thing asks dispatch, or else some of his majesty's real friends may be involved.”